Small & County Grants
The Small Grants Programme is divided into two strands:
- County List for work in the counties with which we have a traditional association, i.e. Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Suffolk, Surrey, East Sussex and West Sussex; and
- Small Grants for work in other areas of the UK, including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Applications can be made for one year grants and multi-year grants. The minimum you can ask us for is £500. The maximum one year grant you can ask us for is £10,000. The maximum multi-year grant you can ask us for is £20,000 spread over a maximum of three years.
Grants can be used towards running costs (including core costs and salaries), project costs, or for one-off capital expenditure such as building refurbishment or equipment.
Grants for capital items or projects must be used within six months of award. Applications for small capital items can be made at any time. However, applications for larger capital items or projects should only be made once 75% of the funding needed has been secured. If you are applying for capital works such as building refurbishment, for capital items that form part of a larger project, or for high value items where the amount you are seeking does not cover the whole purchase price or complete the funding needed, we will not consider making a grant to your charity or organisation unless 75% of the funding needed has already been raised.
Only one grant per organisation can be supported at any one time.
Please refer to the What We Fund page of this website for details of the categories under which we make our grants and examples of the type of work you can apply for.
Please refer to the Not Normally Funded page of our website for details of activities or types of organisations that we do not fund. These apply to all our grant making. Any additional exclusions that are specific to County List or Small Grants are listed below.
There are no deadlines and applications can be submitted at any time, provided that
- you do not already have an active grant from us;
- we are not already assessing an application to one of our other programmes; and
- if you applied previously and were unsuccessful, that more than 12 months has passed since you received your declination letter.
Each fund has its own application form, which can be downloaded in Word or PDF format at the bottom of this page.
We strongly recommend that you download and read the full guidelines for the Small Grants Programme before making your application.
County List
Applications for work in Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Suffolk, Surrey, East Sussex and West Sussex can be made to the County List.
You must be an organisation or a UK Registered Charity with an annual income of under £250,000 to be eligible to apply, though exceptions may be made for those whose activities are county-wide and whose annual income is under £1 million.
It normally takes between three and six months for a decision to be made on County List applications. Applications are initially considered by the relevant County Trustee, and the assessment process may involve a visit to your organisation. His or her recommendations must then be agreed by the Trustees. Trustee meetings take place in March, June, September and December.
Small Grants
Small grants are available to UK* Registered Charities only, for work in areas outside of the traditional counties.
*By "UK" we mean England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Charities must have an annual income of under £150,000 and have been registered with the Charity Commission for a minimum of two years to be eligible to apply.
Small Grant applications are are considered by the Small Grants Committee. We may ask to visit your organisation during the assessment process. Applicants can normally expect to hear the outcome of their application within eight to twelve weeks of us receiving it.
In addition to the exclusions outlined in the Not Normally Funded section, the following additional exclusions apply to Small Grants:
- Organisations that are not registered as a charity.
- Charities that have been registered for less than two years.
- Charities with an annual income of more than £150,000.
- Pre-school groups.
- Out of school playschemes including pre-school and holiday schemes, unless these are specifically for the disabled.
- Scouts and Guides groups, unless in an area of high deprivation, by which we mean those that fall within the bottom third of the National Indices of Deprivation.
- Salary costs for new posts (only salaries for existing staff can be considered).
How to Apply for a Small or County List Grant
There are different application forms for County and Small Grants. Applications for work in Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Suffolk, Surrey, East Sussex and West Sussex should be made on a County List Application Form.
Applications for work in all other areas should complete a Small Grant Application Form.
Please ensure that all sections of the application form are fully completed; it is not sufficient to answer "see attached documents" to questions.
You may enclose additional information, but this should not exceed two A4 sheets. Please do not send DVDs, videos or CD Roms.
Please keep your application as simple as possible and avoid the use of technical terms, acronyms and jargon.
We will not process your application if it is incomplete. Please ensure you enclose all the documents and information we ask you for or it may be returned to you unread.
All applications should be accompanied by a copy of your most recent audited or independently inspected accounts and a detailed budget.
If you are requesting funding over more than one year your budget must reflect this. Please set out costings for each year of the project in separate columns.
If your request is partly or wholly for salary costs, please ensure that the salary element of your budget is broken down as follows:
- Salary
- National Insurance
- Pension (if applicable)
This is particularly important when requesting a two or three year grant. Trustees will consider annual salary increments, but will not consider increases to salaries of more than 2% p.a. If the increases in your budget are larger than this, for instance because of a salary scale you have for your staff, the balance will need to be raised elsewhere.
If your request is for part funding of a salary or project, please explain from where the balance of funds will be/has been raised.
Describe your fundraising strategy for the project. This should include details of the funds you have secured and applications pending. Please note we will expect you to have approached local and regional sources of funding prior to applying to us. If it is not appropriate to do so in this instance, please tell us why.
Please also provide a projected expenditure budget for your organisation as a whole for the coming 12 months and tell us from where the balance of funds will be/has been raised.
If you are applying for salary costs, you must include a copy of the Job Description for the post.
Small Grant applicants should also include the contact details of two independent referees.
We reserve the right to share with other grant makers information received from applicants requesting funding and from those in receipt of funding from us, unless an organisation expressly requests otherwise.
Applicants who are unsuccessful are required to wait a minimum of 12 months from the date of notification before re-applying.
Grantees that are awarded multi-year grants will need to complete a progress report form six months after payment is made each year. This must be received and approved by us before the next year’s grant can be released.
Grantees that receive a one year grant are not required to submit progress reports, unless they are applying to us again (whether it be for the same or a different project/service) within 18 months of the end of the previous grant. A completed progress report form (i.e. about the previous grant) should be sent to us at the same time as the new application.
The progress report form can be downloaded at the bottom of this page..
Downloadable documents
All links below open in a new window.
We recommend that you save the application forms onto your computer before you start to complete your forms (select the “save” option when downloading).
County Grant Application Form - Word
County Grant Applications Form - PDF
Small Grant Application Form - Word
Small Grant Application Form - PDF
Guidelines for the Small Grants Programme - Small and County Grants - Word
Guidelines for the Small Grants Programme - Small and County Grants - PDF